Gays' families lobby for job protections

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, March 20, 1996

WASHINGTON - Two hundred parents and friends of gays and lesbians visited Congress to ask for a federal law making it illegal to discriminate against homosexuals in the workplace.

"When your child is gay or lesbian, their fundamental right to earn a living can be denied," said Mitzi Henderson, national president of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, or P-FLAG, based in Menlo Park.

Henderson said her son James, a 38-year-old lawyer in Denver, had been shut out of some law firms because he is openly gay.

"We think all of our kids ought to have the same opportunities to earn a living," she said Tuesday.

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However, lawmakers and gay rights activists told the group that conservative opposition in Congress made it unlikely that a pending gay rights bill would win approval this year.

The measure, first introduced in 1994 by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., would bar employers from taking sexual orientation into account when hiring, firing or promoting workers. The bill has 31 supporters in the Senate and 131 in the House.

Under federal law, it is illegal to fire or deny employment to people based on their age, gender, race, religion, disability or country of origin. There is no comparable law barring job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, though some cities and states have ordinances or laws that outlaw such discrimination.

Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group that staged the rally Tuesday with P-FLAG, urged the parents to be persistent in pushing their cause.

"You don't have to convince them today," she said, adding that women had lobbied Congress for 38 years before they won the right to vote.

David Smith, the Human Rights Campaign's communications director, said bringing in parents of homosexuals was a deliberate strategy aimed at lawmakers who supported

"family values."

"It sends a powerful message that discrimination against gay people is a family issue," Smith said.&lt;

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